A Friend at Midnight (9 page)

“What are you doing?”

“I'm praying. I'm watching closely so God can't wiggle to the side and pretend He doesn't see me. God!” she yelled. Slippery with sunscreen, ponytail wet and tight, sunglasses sliding around, long thin arms sticking straight up like a gymnast about to break her back, she pointed accusingly upward. “God! Give us revenge! I suggest a slick spot on the road. Dennis Rosetti driving too fast and braking too late! A man who abandons his third grader at the airport, God, deserves to suffer and suffer and suffer and suffer! Or die. You choose.”

Amanda lay back down on her towel.

“Amen,” said Lily Rosetti.

chapter
7

W
ho could have guessed that hate would be so fierce, so alive?

Lily had thought of “hate” as a verb for clothing (I hate pink) or school (I hate essays) or weather (I hate when it's this hot). What a misuse of the word. Hate was a burning wilderness. It occupied her like an army.

And the thing she could not get over was that Dennis Rosetti had no hate because he had no interest. His interest in Michael wasn't even enough for short-term parking.

Her Amen to Amanda's prayer pounded like a snare drum in her ears and made it impossible to think. School, which had always been friendly and bland, was a carnivore, chewing on her. And for the first semester in their lives, Lily and Amanda had no classes together and did not see each other during the day. It was like walking without a floor.

If this was life, Lily was staying home to watch television for the next fifty years.

She was thinner. She knew it was because her pulse wouldn't stop racing.

Only in church did her heart slow down. The next Sunday, for his sermon, Dr. Bordon discussed a sentence Jesus had spoken.
I will not leave you comfortless.
In the original Greek, explained Dr. Bordon, “comfortless” was literally “orphaned.”

It was true. Michael was comfortless and might just as well be orphaned. A sister wasn't enough. A mother wasn't enough. A stepfather was meaningless. Michael Rosetti had no father.

Dr. Bordon implied that Jesus could fill the void. Lily thought probably you had to be a grown-up for that to work. No amount of church would comfort an eight-year-old for the loss of his father.

In the course of the week, Michael had become, in military terms, a noncombatant: a person who didn't—wouldn't—couldn't fight. All he was, was there. He didn't fail in school. In fact, because he sat still instead of yelling and running and arguing and getting into trouble, he did quite well. Teachers liked him more. After all, half the boys in school were given Ritalin to calm them down, so teachers were trained to believe that a semicomatose boy was a good boy.

Lily could hardly stand to look at her brother. He seemed middle-aged to her, as if any moment he would chair a committee or open a checking account.

Lily raced home from school every day to intercept the mail. If Mom got home first, Lily had to follow her trail, because Mom started opening mail in the front hall and continued as she moved, chucking junk mail or ripped envelopes in any wastebasket or on any surface, dropping letters on any table, setting bills near any telephone, taping anything that caught her eye to the refrigerator.

Day after day, the bill didn't come.

After school, Michael didn't get on his bike anymore and ride over to Jamie's. He didn't start projects in the cellar or hide things in the attic. He didn't talk about school and he didn't listen when Lily and Mom did.

On Wednesday of the second week, Mom and Nathaniel were in the kitchen arguing over snacks when Lily got home, and Michael was sitting at the table not taking sides.

“I wanna duice box,” Nathaniel shouted. “I wanna sfig noonans.”

“Lily, darling, I have to practice,” said Mom, meaning, “You handle snacks.” She zoomed down into the cellar, where she practiced her trumpet. Kells had put foam tiles and insulation into the cellar ceiling to absorb the sound, but if you stood over where Mom was playing, your feet vibrated.

When Nathaniel was born, Mom used to pop him into a baby backpack and take him down to the cellar with her, which was supposed to imbue his little baby heart with a love of music. Nathaniel now covered his ears whenever he saw a brass instrument.

Lily gave Nathaniel a four-pack of Fig Newtons.

“I wike sfig noonans,” Nathaniel informed them. His little fingers struggled with the cellophane wrapper. “Opennuh cookie, Wiwwy.”

She opened the pack for him and threw the plastic into the garbage. There lay the credit card bill, unopened.

“Frow it onna foor,” Nathaniel told Lily.

“Don't throw it on the floor! Eat it!”

“No. It's onna foor now.”

“It's on the floor because you threw it there. Don't throw anything else on the floor. I can't stand it when my shoes stick.”

“Foos stick,” said Nate happily. “Foos stick foos stick foos stick!”

A normal Michael would have licked it up off the floor. A normal Michael would have shrieked “Foos stick” for the next half hour too. This Michael wasn't listening.

Lily could not retrieve the bill while the boys were there. Searching through the garbage for interesting envelopes was not a habit she wanted Nathaniel to develop. “Michael, start Nate's new video for him, okay?”

The new video was a particularly sappy Clifford. It was one of the million things that had made Michael want to live someplace else. A normal Michael would have taken Nathaniel outside to experiment with throwing stuff down storm drains, leaping off the carport roof or rolling each other around the yard inside the trash barrels.

This Michael sighed, nodded and followed Nate over to the television, as if the toddler were the one in charge.

Lily fished out the envelope, wiped it clean with a paper towel and stuffed it into her jeans pocket. Then she turned on the kitchen computer to see what e-mails had arrived.

Reb e-mailed like a person planning to publish a ten-volume diary. The very first afternoon at college she had met a great great great guy named Freddie. Within hours, Reb knew Freddie was perfect. In days, she and Freddie were a perfect couple. Lily knew more about Freddie than she did about the President.

This time a word popped out at her. In the header listing other addresses to whom Reb was sending the same message (her three best friends from high school, her favorite high school teacher, a cousin, Mom, Lily) Lily saw the address “denrose.”

She was stunned. The snake knew the very same details about Reb's life that Lily did. But then she read the latest installment of her sister's perfect life with the perfect guy on the perfect campus with the perfect roommates and the perfect professors and she was filled with an unexpected joy.

Her sister was not comfortless. Had not been orphaned. Didn't even know that Michael and Lily had lost a parent. In fact, swept up in the wonderful new world of college, Reb seemed not to remember that Michael and Lily might also have a life. She didn't write, “How's third grade, Michael?” She didn't write, “How awful not to have Amanda in any classes!”

But that was fine. Somehow, by only an hour or two, Reb had missed the nightmare of Michael's return.

Denrose.

It sounded like a street in a new subdivision, where the builder used his children's names, so you had to live on Linda Lane or Kevin Court.

That night Lily sat up late, not doing homework. How could she pay off the credit card bill? She didn't have a checking account. Banks would know how, but Lily hated asking anybody anywhere how to do anything. She liked knowing already.

It was past eleven o'clock. Michael and Nathaniel had been asleep for ages.

The house was very quiet.

Lily heard Mom turn off the news downstairs. She heard Kells say, “Wait a minute, Judith. I wanted to see—”

“I have to talk to you about something,” said Mom, and gently and completely she shut the TV room door.

It had to be about Michael. It was about time Mom started worrying about Michael. Feather light, Lily zipped down the carpeted stairs to listen in.

“He e-mailed me at school,” said her mother.

There could be only one “he.” Denrose. Lily had never thought of denrose reaching Mom at school. Dad could reach Mom, and Lily would never know.

“Dennis is not going to pay any more child support. He says the children don't love him and he's out of the equation.”

Lily stared into the wallpaper. A picture had once hung there. She could see its little nail hole, hidden in a flower. Other people repainted and redecorated. But Mom did not see things. She only heard them. Her world was full of notes and chords and melodies.

Dad's abandoning me, too? thought Lily. He's driving away from me, too? Michael and I are out of his equation.

She had yelled—You're not my father!

Now he was yelling back—And you're not my daughter! So there!

Lily heard the distinct thud of the recliner.

Kells's favorite possession was the dusty blue corduroy recliner on which he lay to watch TV. It had a long stick handle. He'd come home from work, throw the stick and sigh with relief when he was lying there all pillowy on his back. Then he'd get a good grip on the remote and investigate every channel.

“Oh,” said Kells, presumably from his recliner.

“We have to get a lawyer,” said Mom. “We have to fight.”

Lily had a vision of Michael, small and thin at the edge of a courtroom; of Dennis Rosetti telling a judge, He's not worth anything to me.

It wouldn't be a fight, thought Lily. It would be an execution. It would kill Michael.

“It's just money, Judith,” said Kells. “Why don't we forget about it? You and I earn enough. Why even let the children know what Dennis said? Michael's back because he loves you and that's all the support you need.”

But this was untrue.

Michael was not back because he loved Mom. He was back because Dad did not love him.

Mom was a whirlwind occupying some narrow music-filled space. A few minutes each day, the tornado that was Mom came to a stop. She flung herself around her children and fixed dinner and began spinning again, and you could not put your hand in her life any more than you could put your hand into the blades of a fan.

What if Mom understood that Michael had been forced to come home? Would her whirlwind stop? Would she be a fan whose motor had burned out?

“Next Saturday,” said Kells, “I thought I'd take Michael to a ball game.”

I'm paying airfare, thought Lily. Kells is paying time. And Dad—he's paying nothing whatsoever.

She was having a nightmare every few nights.

The dreams were full of wounded phones and angry people in uniform and passengers flinging luggage who would scream, Michael's dead, he's gone, you lost him, it's your fault.

It was never Dad's fault.

If anything happened to Michael, it was always Lily's fault.

Tonight, the police in the nightmare took Michael away for stealing the teddy bear, while Lily ran screaming alongside the police car, dragging Nathaniel by his pitching arm, bumping him against cement lane dividers until eventually he fell apart and she had only his arm.

It was a more vivid dream than usual.

When she woke up, it was sticking to her, like the phone, crawling on her skin.

Lily got up, stumbling blindly to the bathroom. She filled an old-fashioned red rubber hot-water bottle and took it back to bed with her.

What kind of nightmares did Michael have?

Michael was astonished when Kells told him about the baseball plan. His stepfather loved sports, but only watching them on TV while lying in his recliner. Real-life sports were way out past Kells's energy level.